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2017 Northwestern Scientific Images Contest Winners

The 2017 winners of the annual Northwestern Scientific Images Contest represent advances across a wide range of disciplines including astronomy, medicine, chemistry, engineering, and nanotechnology.

Judged by an interdisciplinary panel of local artists, scientists and community leaders, each image comes from a Northwestern lab and showcases both the breathtaking beauty and scientific innovation of contemporary research.

Find out more about the contest, program of events and exhibitions, and next year's submission process at Science in Society.

This image shows three black holes and one normal star dancing in the heart of a dense star cluster. The very strong gravity near black holes bends the (normally straight) paths of starlight. This dramatically distorts the nearby star, causing these swirls and streaks. Computer simulations like these help us understand how black holes form and interact.

This work is particularly timely because LIGO first discovered gravitational waves in 2015, confirming Einstein’s century-old prediction and winning the 2017 Nobel Prize. Those gravitational waves came from the merger of two very distant black holes; black holes which may have been paired up in a dance like the one shown here.

Aaron Geller

Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration & Research in Astrophysics (CIERA)

This 3D-printed copper salt structure can be used in many ways. Here, it floats in a jar of water. The water dissolves the copper salt, resulting in a blue color, and transforming the structure into a very porous sponge-like material. When the salt has been completely dissolved, a polymer skeleton remains. This skeleton resembles the original 3D-printed shape but is incredibly light, like air.

Creating materials like these is important because the “polymer skeletons sponge” can be used to implant all kinds of potent gel and liquid biomaterials during surgery. These fragile gels are currently being used to regenerate parts of tissues and organs.

This is a photograph of a plant called Pitcher’s thistle that is on the brink of becoming endangered. This seed head is in its final stage of development, dispersing seeds like a dandelion. The species plays an important role in the sand dune ecosystems around the Great Lakes.

Habitat destruction (by humans) and seed pillaging (by non-native weevils) are reducing the range and population of this species. Conservation biologists study the thistle and its growth cycle to inform conservation and restoration efforts for it and other endangered plants.

New medicines are very challenging to discover, but they may lay in waiting in the least expected places. This image shows Aspergillus Fungi, otherwise known as common bread mold. Scientists at Northwestern University study organisms like this to come up with new breakthroughs in the field of drug discovery.

The "waves" in this image are the edge of a 3D-printed hydrogel. Hydrogels are made of water, but act like soft solids such as jelly, contact lenses, or cartilage in our joints. The "stars" here are salt crystals. These help solidify the hydrogel. By forming a flexible, jelly-like material, these hydrogels can be 3D-printed into any shape. For example, we can print hydrogel implants to heal damaged cartilage in human joints.

This video shows a mouse brain thinking. Your brain is made up of 100 billion cells called neurons. Neurons send messages to each other – here, neurons glow green when they are sending messages.

Normally, brain cells don’t light up when they communicate. In this video, they contain special proteins engineered to glow when messages are fired off. Using high powered lasers and a trick of quantum physics, researchers can see the cells glow through layers of brain.

These researchers study the hippocampus – the part of the brain that helps us navigate. In this video, we’re watching a mouse’s hippocampus as it runs a virtual-reality maze. This research helps us understand how our brains navigate and form memories.

This image shows tiny purple ropes, dotted with turquoise and yellow sugar bubbles. These ropes are a fibrous material that mimics tissue in the body. Many ropes together can weave a custom-made tissue band-aid. This new material can then help heal damaged organs.

Scientists create these bio-compatible ropes by pushing the fiber material through microscopic molds. The bubbles are a residue from a lubricant which helps the fibers flow through the mold.

This is a photo of failure. In this experiment, nanoparticles were suspended in water. Scientists then painted it onto a microscope slide, hoping to make a sturdy membrane that could be peeled off in one piece.

But the coating cracked as it dried, like desert mud. Here, the cracks are lit up, showing the defects through a microscope. The colors come from iridescence, like what you see in soap bubbles.

The image shows a brain cell known as astrocyte (shown in blue) on a newly-created synthetic material (shown in green and orange).

The large orange structures resemble those in an injured spinal cord. These stimulate changes in the blue brain cells’ structure and function. Materials like this could help the body repair itself after trauma to the central nervous system.

This image shows three slices of a stained mouse brain. Each slice is about the size of your pinky fingernail. Colored stains help scientists pinpoint the location of particular brain cell types.

In this image, only the cells that carry the protein RBP4 show red (all other cells in this sample are blue). Scientists study how these RBP4 cells create new connections to other brain cells. This could lead to new treatments that help neurons repair damaged networks.

This image shows the blood vessels of the retina. The largest vessels (in red) lie on the surface of the retina while much smaller vessels (in green) lie beneath the surface, forming a dense mesh. This branching network of vessels, like the roots of a tree, continuously supplies the retina with necessary oxygen and nutrients.

Scientists study these vessels because diseases like diabetes damage the small vessels. This can eventually lead to difficulties seeing or even complete blindness.

This picture was taken of a living mouse’s eye using a microscope custom-built by Soetikno. With this new microscope, doctors can examine vessel damage earlier, and give treatments to prevent blindness.

This is a rough diamond weighing nearly one third of a carat (about the size of a pea). Diamonds, a form of pure carbon, are formed under immense pressures found 100 miles underground. Ancient volcanic eruptions carried diamonds to the surface worldwide.

In western Brazil, diamonds like this one have superdeep origins – they formed below 500 miles depth. Scientists study these superdeep diamonds because mysterious water-rich minerals are trapped inside them; minerals found nowhere else on Earth.

Michelle Wenz

Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences

Tools & Techniques: Stereomicroscope, Focus stacked image

Helix Magazine

is a publication by Science in Society Northwestern University's Office for science outreach and public engagement.